


And Somewhere We Will Meet

by cm (mumblemutter)



Series: The Persistence of Memory [2]
Category: Blade Runner (1982), Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Community: reel_startrek, Multi, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-17
Updated: 2009-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:06:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/pseuds/cm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Quotes:</b><br/>- <a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-elegy-for-my-mother-in-which-she-scarcely-appears/">An Elegy for My Mother In Which She Scarcely Appears</a>, Eavan Boland<br/>- <i>The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe</i>, Douglas Adams<br/>- <i>Still Life with Woodpecker</i>, Tom Robbins<br/>- <i>Equal Rites</i>, Terry Pratchett<br/>- <a href="http://poetry.dreamwidth.org/15913.html">The Astronomer and the Poet</a>, Jessica Piazza<br/>- <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoets/901745.html">You Are Never Ready</a>, Nicole Blackman</p></blockquote>





	And Somewhere We Will Meet

> "So I met this guy, right?"
> 
> "Was he human?"
> 
> "Why is that always the first question out of your mouth? 'Was he human.' I'm starting to get a complex."
> 
> "You? One can only wish. Tell me about this guy."
> 
> "I don't know. So far, I'm still figuring him out. Come here."

 

_chapter 1._

Offworld turns into New Mexico turns into a cabin that he buys, sight unseen, in what used to be woods, in what used to be a national park. Now it's mostly dead and dying trees and an almost absolute silence, which he welcomes initially but is slowly starting to resent. They build, mostly, the first three months - the cabin's not in all that bad a shape, considering, but there are still layers upon layers of dead leaves and rotting bark to strip away and burn and reshape. McCoy's not quite as fit as he likes to think he is, mostly he bitches while Jim laughs and effortlessly tears up another rotten board.

"You're such a fucking baby," he says, when McCoy swears up a storm after getting yet another splinter, somehow, magically, burrowing its way through his gloves as if it's a heat seeking missile set out to destroy tender skin.

"Half an hour ago I was an old man. Decide which insult you want to throw at me and stick to it, why don't you." But he's had enough, and he throws off his gloves and slouches away to the makeshift hammock they've set up, reaching for the sixpack that always has to be nearby.

This is how most days end, with him balancing one leg on the ground so he can swing aimlessly back and forth, getting steadily sleepier as Jim continues to work. Watching him, almost always, and sometimes he says, "Hey, hey - c'mere," softly, but Jim hears him, this he knows, and he almost always comes.

*

The spinner that lands in front of the cabin is black and sleek - he's not quite seen a model so powerful before. Jim stops chopping wood just to stare, and McCoy reaches for his gun without looking, aims. But when Uhura steps out she has both palms raised. She says, "If I wanted you dead, gentlemen," as she strides past Jim, boots gleaming as bright as her vehicle. Jim grins, automatically, and she rolls her eyes at his soft _Hey there_, "Oh god you really are exactly like him, aren't you."

"More or less," McCoy says, but he doesn't lower his weapon, even when she's right in front of him and it's pointed directly at her chest. She doesn't seem aware of it, or at least she doesn't seem to care. "Does PikeCorp make skinjobs of blade runners too, now?"

"They always did." She shrugs easily, but her smile is brittle. "You'd be surprised what they can do with just your DNA. Are you going to invite me in, or are we just going to stand here until your arm gets tired."

Jim says, "I like her. She reminds me of you. Very few social skills, badass method of transportation." He walks past McCoy and into the house, arms piled full of wood, and McCoy sighs. He waves Uhura in with his gun hand, and she smiles again, this time genuine and bright. Jim's wrong though: Uhura is nothing like him. Runners only ever show up when there's a replicant to kill, and they never come unarmed.

"So I have a proposition for you," she says smoothly - Jim offered her coffee and an easy smile and she turned both down flat. She holds up a hand when McCoy opens his mouth, and pushes the computer forward. "Voiceprint identification: Nyota Uhura. Bring up file number 276211. Code name: Nero."

The man whose face shows up on the screen is bald and pale, brown eyes staring at them in secret amusement. McCoy identifies and stores information automatically: Miner, Mars Colony. Incept date 2256.

"Escaped last week with five others. Killed five guards and two visiting PikeCorp execs while doing so."

"Yeah - that sounds real familiar. Didn't end so well the last time someone made me an offer like this one. And why me?"

"According to my Lieutenant, you're still one of the best. Second best." Her face twitches, and McCoy has to stifle a smile. "And this time it's different. They're still on Mars, or at least that's what we're assuming from the bodies he leaves behind." Uhura calls up another file, still images of bodies in various stages of dead. It hits him, just about the same moment that she says, "Runners. They're targeting, and hunting, specifically, hunters. Two of them so far. One got away, more or less. He's a veg down at Cedar's. From the surveillance we've been able to gather, for no particular reason, none that we've been able to discern, in any case."

McCoy wants to say: I wonder why they might possibly have a grudge against cops trained to kill them, but then he doesn't quite want to sound like the hypocrite he knows he is, so he only says, "And what do I get out of this?"

"Kirk wasn't lying when he said he needed Jim in order to build the Nexus Seven. He doesn't need Jim dead though - it's just reverse engineering, and then. If they could make a James T. Kirk rep based off of his memories, well." Jim's the one that gets it first, his head snaps up and he exhales quietly as she continues softly, "How long do you want to live?"

It's an argument that he'd never thought he'd make - Uhura tells them she'll wait in the spinner while they decide, Jim's saying _No, no, no_, but in McCoy's head there's only one real thing that matters: Jim could live. Jim could live, and that's all that counts. Fuck everything else.

"I thought you said you don't trust them," he snarls, when he finally realizes McCoy's not backing down, when McCoy has his arms crossed and his face set to brook no argument. "They could kill me still."

"But you'll die anyway." They've both noticed it. Little things, really. Replicants were designed to last until almost the entirety of their four years, but close enough to the end and the decay starts to show. Jim continues to shout, but McCoy's stopped listening, and in the end he just storms off, stomps into the bedroom and slams the door behind them, and that's when McCoy knows he's won.

 

> "Did you suspect, even for just a second, when you saw me, that I was a skinjob?"
> 
> "No."
> 
> "Not even a little bit?"
> 
> "Did you ever make mistakes?"
> 
> "No."
> 
> "Then why are you asking me this question?"

 

_chapter 2._

There are only two of them in the transport shuttle - "Property of PikeCorp," Uhura says when he raises a brow, and not for the first time he wonders if Nero is really that dangerous or did they just want him out of the way so they could get their hands on Jim, but he never second-guessed his decisions, and when he left Jim, when Uhura dropped him off at PikeCorp's NYC headquarters, McCoy had said goodbye as if it were the last time. Jim didn't seem too happy about it, but fuck that in any case. McCoy can't think about it too hard, not right now.

"So Kirk says that you were here for the Nexus Five uprising, that right?" She's got all the files floating around her in multi-colored hues, pulling references here and making connections there, pushing some forward for McCoy to read when she finds anything interesting or relevent.

"Hrm," he grunts noncommittally, expecting Uhura to press, but instead she just nods her head briefly and turns back to her papers. Runners always get that some things that go down, you just don't want to talk about. Except that in this case, that's not entirely true. McCoy might not want to talk about it if he knew what had happened there, but he doesn't. He remembers getting on the transport, and then waking up six weeks later in his apartment, two broken ribs, a bruised kidney, more money in his bank account than he usually earned in a year, and no recollection of any of the time in between. If anyone asked him, he'd say he'd never been to the colonies, any of them. And despite any evidence to the contrary, that's about as truthful as it gets. "Who's our contact," he asks, just to change the subject.

"Lieutenant Robau. There are three runners left on Mars. They're all on the hunt, underground, been since the first runner turned up dead, but Nero keeps finding them. Don't think it's a leak though. Maybe they just got lucky."

"Skinjob? They're the unluckiest sons of bitches ever made. However they're doing it, it ain't luck."

*

They get driven to the hotel by a skinjob in a three-piece suit, whose extremely pretty face wavers on the edge of the uncanny valley, but who bristles when McCoy can't stop staring. "This way please," he says briskly, and spins around on his heels, not turning back to see if they follow.

"Testy," he mutters to Uhura, who only quirks her lips. One room and two beds but the view is spectacular, the first thing McCoy does is run a shower while Uhura wanders to the window and presses her palms against the glass. When he comes out, towel-dry and clean, she's still standing there. "I gotta make a call," but he's not sure she heard.

They'd given him a direct line to call, and Jim's expecting him but McCoy's not sure what his mood will be like. Chances are: cloudy with a possibility of rain. He only looks tired though, his skin is pale and his mouth tight. "Alpha," McCoy says, and only exhales when Jim replies almost immediately.

"Beta."

"How are you?"

"I'm fine, Bones. If exhausted. I've been poked and prodded at more the past day or so than I have, well. Ever. Being treated like a guinea pig, I have to admit, makes me feel like, what's the word I'm looking for. Yes, chattel. And how are _you_?"

"I'm fine. Mars is lovely. You should come visit."

"Gee, I wonder why we didn't think of that? No, wait."

McCoy refuses to feel guilt. Instead he just says, "I'll be back for you when I can."

"And I'll be here. Hopefully." His voice remains airy, but McCoy knows exactly how pissed off he is. Jim hates not having things go his way, even when deep down he's aware that there's no other choice.

*

_(I knew we had to grieve for the animals  
a long time ago: weep for them, pity them.  
I knew it was our strange human duty  
to write their elegies after we arranged their demise.)_

*

Lieutenant Robau scowls at them, unimpressed. "We can take care of our own, here."

"Really? Seems to me that you obviously can't do fuck all, since your guys keep ending up dead." Uhura shoots him a look, but McCoy only ignores her. The room is fluorescent white and the walls are the same sickly shade of puke they are in every station everwhere, but everything is tinged _pink_, somehow. Even Robau looks like specks of dust had burrowed itself under his skin and turned his dusky skin red. It makes him feel vaguely ill, add to that he can feel a migraine coming on, threatening to turn his whole world white. So Robau can fuck him, as can everyone else.

""What McCoy means," Uhura says smoothly, as Robau's face darkens, "Is that we're here to help, any way we can. Nero doesn't know we're here, so let's take advantage of whatever edge we have to settle this."

He stares at her for a while, then shrugs. "Yeah. Yeah okay. These were good men and women. They didn't deserve to go out like this. I knew Cho for fifteen years. Now they say he's lucky if he dies soon, because his body's useless."

"Do you know why."

"Why runners? Fuck if i know. They never go after the runners. They always just run. Who knows why."

*

The first stop they make is to Nero's quarters - McCoy's going through the small, cramped room. searching under bunks and mattresses while Uhura talks to the foreman in a language that's similar to Spanish but he's pretty sure isn't. He keeps jabbering and jabbering, and McCoy's headache isn't getting any better. All he wants is for the guy to shut the fuck up so he can get a sense of things. Finally, he peters out and leaves, and Uhura sits down heavily on the nearest bunk. "What did he say?"

"Nothing of use. He wants PikeCorp to compensate him for his troubles, mostly. Claims the new shipment of replicants were supposed to arrive last week but they're held up and now he's losing money, blah blah blah - I don't think he could tell Nero apart from any of the other miners here. Apparently all the sixes are a surly bunch but they're not as dumb as the fours and not as rebellious as the fives. That's all I got, really."

"Wonderful." McCoy sighs and sits down next to her. "There's nothing here. They probably took everything with them when they broke out."

"What, on a three day work detail down in the valley? They're not allowed to bring personal effects down there, firstly. Secondly, as far as we can tell, the escape was dependent on an accident occurring. They probably planned getting out but there's no way they would have known when."

But then it didn't make sense. Replicants collected photographs and trinkets whenever they could. Hoarding memories like gold - a dozen skinjobs in this one room and not a single trace that any one of them had ever been there.

"Maybe we go to the home of the first runner that was killed - he lived nearby, right?"

"Yeah, about a mile away."

*

Uhura breaks the seal on the door and wrinkles her nose at the stench. "Did no-one come back to clean," she mutters, and steps gingerly out of the way of a pool of congealed blood.

"He had no family, and they de-commission the replicant assist whenever the owner dies in case she or he killed him. Sorry it's not up to your high standards of cleanliness."

She ignores him to start rifling through Said's computer. Other than the blood, everything is more or less intact. If Nero wanted anything other than the runner's life, it was definitely not here. There's not much by way of personalization in any case - the furniture all looks as if it came with the house, same as his own. The only reason he has a piano is because the previous owner had left it behind and he never got around to throwing it out - McCoy always finds it disconcerting how almost all runners live in quarters that are almost indistinguishable from one another. He wanders around, picking up and putting down photos of smiling women and men, turning one over on occassion. _Zain and Isha - May 1965_, one says. No pictures of the living, not here. There are disposable lighters in a glass bowl on the kitchen table inscribed with the name of what must be a club. McCoy pockets one and walks back to Uhura. "Anything interesting?"

"No video surveillance, AI has been disabled. I downloaded his casefiles, but I doubt they'll prove fruitful."

"And they locked the rep assist in the closet so she couldn't see what was going on."

"I wonder why all this trouble to leave the body behind so openly."

McCoy grimaces, and tugs at his tie. It's too fucking hot in here. The temperature control must be disabled as well. "Who knows what goes through their skell brains. Come on, let's go. All this heat is making me thirsty."

*

He skips dinner and goes straight for the alcohol, vodka shots straight up because the waiter glares at him in disgust when he asks for sake. Uhura picks at her food and scrolls through Said's files, searching for anything remotely useful. At some point between the first shot and the fifth shot that he has trouble reaching for because he can't see too good, he asks her, offhandedly, "Doesn't it bug you? That some skinjob with your face and your body was getting used up by the type folks living on this here fine planet?"

"As opposed to what? The likes of you? Perhaps you should ask James that question." She doesn't even bother looking up from her work, and her tone is unconcerned.

McCoy snarls. "It's not the same."

"Sure."

*

_(It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.)_

*

District Eight the bar is, creatively enough, located at the edge of District Eight. They push their way through narrow, busy streets, vendors shouting at them from every corner. McCoy buys an un-recognizable animoid from a young, tattooed woman who almost thrusts it at him, screaming incomprehensibly about this and that or another, stuffs it in his pocket and feels, briefly, sentimental and old, but Uhura seems charmed by the _thing_, too, and they're not exactly expensive, so. He raises his brow when she manages to communicate with the vendors without them sneering condescendingly at her, the way they do McCoy, here and everywhere else. "I was going to join PikeCorp's Linguistics Research Department at some point." She smiles faintly at his look. "The Nexus Ones couldn't differentiate between accents, let alone parse different languages. And the further away from Earth you get-"

"The more mangled the way they speak, yeah yeah, I get it."

"It's not as if they're all conspiring to exclude you, McCoy. See this is why the Nexus Sixes are so advanced. They're not just capable of understanding a pre-programmed set of languages, they can adapt, far quicker than either one of us, to just about anything."

"How very fascinating," McCoy shakes his head, but Uhura's eyes are bright and he lets her ramble on about morphology and phonology and whatnot that makes damned near no sense at all to him, until they hit the pub proper. It's not much to look at, on the inside and out, and every other person inside is either a John or a skinjob - McCoy forces his way through to the bar, deftly freeing himself from grabbing hands and wide eyed hithers to come.

The bartender slithers over in his wheelchair. He speaks through an electronic box jammed into his throat, so mechanical that McCoy has to lean close to catch what he's saying. Which is: "We got all our permits and we don't want no trouble. Any girl or boy you want is yours." He nods his head but his blue eyes are constantly wandering the room, seeing everything but nothing at the same time.

This close, McCoy can almost see the processors whirring in his eyes. In-organic modification - he'd heard of it but not seen it until he'd hit Mars. Not so surprising; shit was illegal everywhere but offworld. Up here though, it seemed like every other person replaced their arm or their eyes or their tongue with something mechanical that gleamed unnaturally under the light and made them closer to the Nexus Ones and Twos than to humans, back when the motto was _Better. Faster. Stronger._ All the the body-mod ads that run constantly throughout Mars City say something similar. PikeCorp's second biggest export. It all makes his skin fucking crawl, and the guy seems to notice. His smile gets sleeker, deeper, and there's a glass filled with a pale red liquid in front of McCoy that wasn't there a second ago. "On the house. Like I said, we don't want no trouble. Mars Surprise. One for you too, Ma'am."

"What's the surprise," Uhura says, sniffing the drink experimentally.

"Mostly it's what you don't remember doing the day afterwards."

Uhura puts the drink back down on the counter slowly, then grabs the guy by the collar, not so slowly, clean into the air. He squaks and his chair whirls and spins emptily. "Runner. Name of Said. Used to come in here, before he got dead. Lie to me and I will break your neck."

Said, it would seem, went for a single particular skinjob. Name of Betty, McCoy throws the John she's with out and doesn't even bother flashing his gun. She's got long red hair and eyes a peculiar shade of green, and when Uhura mentions Said's name she starts crying, curling in on herself. "I didn't know," she says, over and over again, until Uhura sits down next to her and puts her hands around her arms. "Please. Please."

But her voice is gentle when she asks, "What didn't you know."

The girl hitches in a breath. "I don't - they just wanted to know. Where they lived. Runners they don't like doing it here - paranoid. I didn't tell them nothing more - I swear. I only told him because of Mandana."

"Who's Mandana?"

"His girl. Was, she's dead now. Please. I got three years left, okay? Please don't."

"Relax, kid," McCoy says, and ruffles her head absently before they leave. "They gotta pay us for that."

*

_(Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.)_

*

"Look, I don't care if you're suddenly the champion of the replicant rights campaign, I just need to know you've got my back." It's not so much a question as it is a demand for truth, her eyes are narrowed at him, hard and contemplative.

McCoy had been flipping through the records of the dead runners, trying to find a common link between them. Trying to get Jim on the line in-between, but no-one's picking up. He stops now, turns to look out the glass windows instead of at her. Mars is burning, as always. They should have insisted on a room without a view. "We got maybe two hours to get some shut-eye. Clean-up. You sure you want to do this."

"I'm sure I don't want to end up dead because you've lost it, yes."

"Fuck you too, sweetheart. I have to make a call, do you mind?"

"You really got a thing for that skinjob, don't you? He's not real, you know. He's just James, with bio-engineered skin."

If she were sneering, or condescending, he'd have told her to fuck off, shoved her aside and gone back to work. Instead, her face has turned soft. Sympathetic. Pitying, almost. No, not even almost. His fist is closed and she goes down before he can even think about it. Not a direct hit, even off guard she's still a runner, but when she raises herself onto her arms, palms flat on the floor, her lip is swelling and blood's running down her chin. "That, motherfucker," she says, easily. Calmly. "Was a mistake."

He barely sees it coming - she's lithe and strong and knows exactly where to punch, and then their bodies are pressed together and he slams her against the wall, but coming to rest he's more exhausted than she is, and the pain makes his eyes water so he can't fight it when she somehow manages to wriggle an arm free and twist it around his wrist, and slam him back until his bruised kidneys start screaming, When she smiles, her mouth is filled with blood, and McCoy says, tiredly, "Bitch," and kisses her. It's over real quick. Her palms on his chest, pushing him to the floor, and he lifts his hands to push her hair out of her face as she rides him, teeth clenched but eyes wide open.

McCoy hands her a wet towel afterwards, to wipe her bloodied face, but she only takes it and disappears into the bathroom. When she comes back her hair is tied back once more and her expression is serene. "You make your call, McCoy. I'm going to go for a walk."

 

> "How's Mars treating you, Bones?"
> 
> "Let's see. The food's horrendous, the air tastes like recycled plastic and the inhabitants are the dredges of society. And I ain't talking about the skin- replicants."
> 
> "So, basically you feel right at home then."
> 
> "Fuck you, Jim."
> 
> "You'd have to come back first for that to happen. I await, as usual, with baited breath."

 

_chapter 3._

"How are things going?"

Jim grimaces. "They're going. I'm bored as fuck, to be honest. We're figuring things out though."

"We?"

"Yeah, it's not like they're all such great fucking geniuses over here - Pike more or less wrote the bar and everyone just followed him blindly. But hey - there's the great James T. Kirk to take over now, and his pet replicant with half his memories and not a single bit of his clout." He sounds more bitter that McCoy's ever heard him, than McCoy's ever wanted to.

"Jim," McCoy says. "I'll be back for you. I promise."

Jim's face turns solemn, and he ducks his head. "You better make it soon," is his only reply though, before he cuts the line.

"Trouble in paradise," Uhura asks. He hadn't even heard her come in. She's leaning against the doorframe, hands tucked casually into her pockets.

"Just the usual. Is Spock yours?" The question comes out before he can think about it too hard, and she starts, and her face tightens, but then it softens again as she gauges him, nods her head slightly.

"It's complicated," she says finally, and McCoy doesn't want to think too hard about what it means, that the replicants followed the footsteps of their templates, even without memories imprinted onto them. Blank slates should be blank slates - pre-programmed emotional responses and nothing more. "I need him. That's about all I know, sometimes."

*

_(For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.)_

*

Nero kills a runner who lives right on the edge of the barrier. Not his official residence, according to the records he was supposed to be at the other side of the city, but records got spotty the further away from Earth you got. Runners came and went, did what they had to do. Uhura's mouth is a thin, unhappy line. They'd gotten the addresses from the little redheaded skinjob, but never figured any of them would still be dumb enough to still be living there. "Maybe he thought he could take them. Set a trap," she muses, but McCoy doesn't give a fuck, really. Dead is dead, and it doesn't matter how you got there, it just means you failed.

They get there before the cleanup crew does. Blood and guts everywhere and a barely recognizable face on a man who hadn't had the slightest chance despite what he was professionally. McCoy chews gum and Uhura turns faintly green, but she kneels down resolutely and slams the needles into his head, ignores the blood staining her pristine pants a deeper shade of red.

"If we're lucky," she mutters, mostly to herself, but McCoy knows they will be. The blood in the air tastes warm. He leaves Uhura to the memories and slowly makes his way to the back of the house. His finger pressing down on the trigger and the hair on the back standing up, but his mind doesn't have time to process what his body's telling him before he's flying through the air, slamming back against the wall and he's shooting blindly at a shape moving so fast it's a blur, and then he falls to the floor and something goes boom and then everything goes black.

He opens his eyes and someone's yelling, tugging at his coat, "Come on, McCoy, get the fuck up. I am not going to die here today, motherfucker." And then there's the slick whine of the BHG releasing, and more yelling, and someone is screaming and he finally sees Uhura, through a film of blood and dust - her hair in her face and her lips curled back. "Come on," she says. "Come on."

Somehow he manages to pull himself up, and he's not sure how they do it, but they do. They run-crawl into the spinner and he's spitting out orders on automatic. Seek and destroy, now now _now_. And then he's not on the spinner anymore, he's on a gurney and the entire world is white and someone is screaming and he distantly realizes that it's his own voice, but he can't stop. A woman in dark red scrubs leans over him, says _It might be better if we just made him forget._ McCoy jerks back, and Uhura's got her hand on his collar, tugging him back into the seat. "You need a hospital."

"No, no - I'm fine," but they can't anyway, because the spinner that blew up the house rises from behind what's left of it, swirling up dust and flashing blue lights. Said's probably. Uhura's barking orders to shoot, but they both realize too late that it's gunning dead ahead at them, and they have enough time to bank a sharp left and then they're tumbling over and over, and by the time the anti-gravs compensate enough for it to be able to follow, there's nothing left but air to chase. Uhura puts her hand to her forehead, and seems surprised when her fingers come away wet. "You need a hospital," McCoy says.

She starts laughing, tiny, condensed little hiccups that go on for a while, and when she finally stops she says, "A drink. That's what I fucking need," and McCoy can only snort in agreement.

*

They tell him later, the local boys, that there were two bodies in the wreckage. Uhura wants to see the bodies and McCoy makes a show of wanting to follow, but she ignores him and he sinks back into the chair, "You should be in the hospital," was the only thing she said later, but she should talk, he can't find an inch of her that isn't bruised or cut. "I couldn't get anything from them. Oh, and Nero wasn't there." Either he'd gotten away or he'd never been there to begin with. He pours himself another drink with the hand that's not broken and asks her what the good news is. Her answer is a surprise, she grins through her battered face and holds up the mem'bank. Somehow she'd managed to hold on to that while shit was going to hell. "I'd have rather left you behind than this, to be honest. I was going to, but then I figured your boy would kill me if I let anything happen to you." She makes a face, then winces. "If he's even a fraction of what James is like I'll never live it down."

"How long have you known him?"

She pauses in assembling the mem'bank together. "Almost since I started out. My first assignment was one of his - Nexus Six prototype that went AWOL in the city. This before they ironed out most of the kinks in the model, I guess. How's your head?"

"Could be worse." Worse being, as usual, dead. Blade runner's motto: if you're still breathing, you're still a winner. He fills up a glass and pushes it towards her. "I'm guessing we'll be needing this, right?"

*

Memories are tricky, jumbled and almost impossible to put together cohesively, even when the subject is willing and ready. The last few moments of a dying man's life - Uhura works for hours, cutting and splicing until it resembles a relatively linear progression. Mostly it's just screaming, and blood, a man dying in pain and fear. Nero's face, tilting curiously, mouthing, _hello_.

"So he was there." Uhura pauses and takes a printout. It's the first time they've seen his face other than on his registration sheet. "Interesting tattoos. Think they're peculiar to the mine?"

"Not that I can tell. None of the other miners had them."

She taps on the table with a nail absently. "The bodies were pretty burnt up, but there were some patches of discolored skin. Might have been tattoos."

"Ayel has them too." He prints out a picture of him too, puts them side by side. "Different, but the same. They're a tribe now. Warriors with warpaint. That's new."

"Not that it helps us any, we don't know what it means."

Uhura pushes away from the table and walks slowly to the window to gaze out at the setting sun. Red, like every goddamned thing on this planet. The color of rust and blood and death, all around. "It's this planet. It's wrong. This whole planet is wrong," she says.

And McCoy, he just replies, "No. It's us. It's always us."

*

_(We share ninety-eight percent of our genetic code  
with rats. Over half with grain. The stars, then,  
must contain us somehow in their burning.)_

*

They figure out, after a couple of days, why there were no windows in the room; why the floor to ceiling glass. Because outside was where the people tended to do their screaming. Everyone in the throng of humanity that congregated at District 8 walked around with the same damned expression on their face. Blank and unseeing. Gone or barely there. The locals down at the station told him once that the crime rate was so high they didn't even bother investigating no-more, they just took names and cleaned up and locked up the ones too dumb to run away. "Of course, you blade runners are extra important - so y'all get enforcement from offworld, even. Can't have you folks dropping dead, can we," one Officer tells him, while slamming a man down into a chair.

"Most of the perps, they all Reps?"

"Fuck no - I ain't no Rep. Fuck you, cocksucker." The man spits at McCoy's feet, which gets him a smack across the face by the cop. His cheek makes a sick, wet sound that McCoy has to cringe at, even above the din of the station.

"Settle down, Dobbs. And yeah, I fucking wish. Maybe we'd get a bigger fucking budget that way. Maybe someone might care when one of us dies, eh?"

McCoy's already bored, waiting for Uhura to come back with the files they need. He spots her ponytail behind an open door, and nods his head genially at the cop. "Be seeing you," he says, and doesn't bother to wait for a reply.

 

> "A pleasure model?"
> 
> "Kirk - thought it would be funny. Persuaded Pike somehow. The bastard always indulged him. Something about their fathers."
> 
> "Yeah, that sounds pretty much like Jim."
> 
> "She's - or she was, the only one though. How did she die?"
> 
> "Messily."

 

_chapter 4._

"Alpha."

"Romeo. You look better each and every day, Bones. Uhura treating you good?"

"She cooks. She cleans. She keeps me satisfied. Like a real woman does. What have you done for me lately, Jim?"

Jim leans his cheek against his closed fist and blows an invisible bubble. "I made a breakthrough in mapping the neural memory path today, plus some other techy things I won't bother your pretty little head with, but let's just say: everyone loves me for my massive, brilliant brain. Except for you, because I can't dance."

"Cook. Clean. Sexual satisfaction."

"One out of three, if you come home soon. Come home soon." His smirk fades slightly. "This Nero is bad news, Bones. Be careful."

"Don't tell me how to do my job. And I won't tell you how to...do whatever it is you do. I have to go." McCoy snaps the comm off harder than he'd intended to, unnecessarily, since his scowl probably speaks volumes about his mood. Then again, Jim always said that grumpy was his default state and that it was just a matter of what degree he'd been heated up to. He stares at the blank screen for a while, then shoves Jim out of his mind like so much snow on a sidewalk. Focus, on what he came here for. That's all he has room for now.

*

McCoy understands, more or less, why replicants run. They run because they're afraid and they run because they think their emotions are real (but Jim's emotions are real) and they run because they don't want to die. But Nero's not running. Not away, anyway. Full speed, head on, a man with a purpose that's not to live but to die, eventually, because the runners always get you in the end. To die a martyr, maybe, but that required others to remember you beyond a life that spanned four years.

Uhura cocks her head and tells him that maybe they're evolving, and either he's rubbing off on her or this planet is making her crazy. Money's on the latter, because he sure as fuck is no influence on anyone what with his refusal to think about anything too hard. And also he's pretty sure the planet is driving him nuts as well. He kisses her to stop his brain from screaming at him and she shudders, falls into him.

*

He breaks open his last bottle of sake that night, Uhura laughs at him, typically, but doesn't turn down the glass he pushes in her direction. They watch the videos again, back and forth and back and forth, not looking for clues so much as letting it sink in - McCoy's forgotten how good it often felt, the hunt and the chase. Every nerve held tightly on edge and somehow heightened rather than dulled by the alcohol.

Which is when Uhura says, "Huh," and tilts her head, mouth open and soft. "These aren't current memories. Pause. Back two seconds. There."

"He had a flashback in the middle of dying?"

"No - I think. The images are such a mess, and not just because he was terrified. It's because they were -"

"Getting memories out of him. Can we access those?"

"Doesn't work that way. We gotta find their mem'bank. I wonder what they could possibly want from him."

McCoy doesn't answer, turns back to the screen instead and starts the video once more. Three seconds in and something catches his eye. "Computer, pause. Enlarge sector three-five-seven. Filter out surrounding sounds." Ayel murmuring in the background, something, over and over again.

"-the fuck is he saying."

Uhura says, "He's praying for the dead and dying. Spanish I think. I've never heard it before though. It's not in any known database I can think of."

In Spanish, a prayer for the dead. McCoy's mother used to go to temple every weekend, but that was just for show, and eventually she stopped, and he never learned anything anyway except that the suit made his skin itch and that the priest smelled faintly of rotting fruit and it made him nauseous. After a while, she discovered the box, and she foisted it on him until his dad dragged them both away, and he's not thought about any of it since. "Great, tattoos and a fucking prayer. Are they starting their own religion or something?"

Uhura purses her lips. "Appropriating, maybe." Replicants didn't have their own histories. What culture and rituals they had, they had to crib from others. But not from here, surely. Surely not from here. Kirk was right about one thing: there is nothing out there. L.A. is cracked and bleeding, but her wounds are seeped through with the blood of everyone that has ever lived and fucked and fought and died there. Her very foundation speaks of vibrant life, absorbs it like so much rain on porous rock. Mars Colony only remembers the boots of bureaucrats and PikeCorp executives, all with dollar signs in their eyes and their souls firmly entrenched on Earth.

"Hey," she says suddenly. "Did you catch that? He said a name - I've heard it before. Mandana?"

McCoy frowns for a second, then it hits him. "The little red-headed skinjob, she said Nero was sweet on some girl."

"Right, right. Dead girl. Think one of the runners retired her?"

"Do a search on-"

"Already there." The replicant that shows up on the screen is pale and blonde, startling blue eyes. Typical pleasure model. "File says she was retired six months ago, for trying to get off-planet without papers, but. This is weird. There aren't any pictures, no ID on who retired her. Just a requisition for a replacement. The system's booting me out just for trying to find out."

"How about we ask the skinjob, she said she knew this Mandana."

"She's terrified."

"Yeah, but let's shake her up anyway. Maybe something breaks free."

*

This time, Uhura slams her face-down on a table and presses her gun to the back of her neck. She screams, like a thing dying, until McCoy lays the mem'box right in front of her face. "Maybe you're not afraid of dying - but we don't need you to talk to tell us everything." When she tries to break free again is when McCoy spots the tattoo on the small of her back - intricate and beautiful.

"You don't understand," she says brokenly. "She wasn't the first. I tried to warn her, I did." Her lips thin at McCoy's glare. "You don't say no to the runners."

"And?"

She clamps her mouth shut, and McCoy backhands her across the face. "Come on, little girl. We don't have time for this."

"One of you killed her."

"One of us?"

"Runner. I don't know which one - they don't tell us sometimes, not until we get there. It was supposed to be me, but I switched because I'd been used up the night before and I didn't want to do it so soon. Nero, he just got so angry. He knew she didn't - wouldn't, run."

McCoy exhales silently. "So you told him."

"I didn't have a choice. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She starts sobbing quietly, and she says, "You can kill me now. I don't care."

"You'll die soon enough," McCoy says, and Uhura lets her go.

*

Robau deflects, keeps asking them what it has to do with Nero, but finally, when McCoy calmly threatens to throw him right though the barrier, says, "Look, some dead replicant shows up, it's not our problem. It's a property issue at most. I mean, sometimes it gets out of control, but insurance usually covers the damages. It's hard to permanently damage them in the first place, they're built so strong."

"So why cover it up then."

"Because," he says, and he opens the file and tilts the screen so they can both see. McCoy feels the blood leave his face, and beside him he can her Uhura's faint exhalation of breath. "He subdued her using a stunner - issued to all Mars runners just a couple of years ago. No-one else has these." He sighs heavily and turns the screen off with a snap. "Out here, everyone goes crazy sometimes. PikeCorp, they would have asked questions, demanded an investigation. These are good people. They're _our_ people."

"So you keep telling us," McCoy says, but without rancor. Robau was just doing his job, protecting his men. It's what he would have done too, at some point. Perhaps even now.

"And Nero? He, what? He's going after them because of her? Because of one skinjob?"

Uhura says, "We'll be taking that case-file now. Thanks." She thinks he's still hiding something, McCoy can tell by the set of her shoulders, but Robau's face is rock-hard and unbreakable, and in the end they just take what they can get and leave.

 

> "You'd think at some point they'd weed out the more destructive emotions."
> 
> "If they could you'd be out of a job."
> 
> "Maybe after the Nexus Sevens come out. I thought of retiring. Find a nice desk someplace."
> 
> "Whatever you do, don't let them persuade you back. It's not that bad, being little people."

 

_chapter 5._

Uhura's dancing around the room. Or rather, it's a slow sway to a music that only she can hear. Her hair loose around her shoulders and a liquor bottle gripped in her hand, her gaze is soft and fixed entirely elsewhere. McCoy wonders who she dreams of when she does - if Spock whispers in her ear that he loves her and if she promises then that she'll rescue him, take them both away from all this. Or if it's the other way around, or perhaps something else entirely. "I lived in Nairobi until I was about six. My parents left before they closed the borders, and afterwards they wouldn't let us back in, even though we were born there." Her voice is dreamy, distant. "So we had to settle in Shanghai. Back then some of the reps were manufactured there, when it was still cheaper. They'd escape, sometimes. Open their eyes, hit the ground running and take out whoever was in their way. This before they figured out how to put them on ice until they'd imprinted them correctly."

"Money capital of the world to NYC runner. That's a bit of a step down, isn't it?"

Uhura smiles wanly. "It's a lie. Most of China is a wasteland, just like everywhere else. Shanghai is New York with slightly cleaner air." She pauses. "My parents died - they were killed by reps escaping from a transport shuttle to the outer colonies. I was twelve. Jim saved my life. Kept me from slipping away into the badlands."

It's startling, to hear Jim's name, for a split second he thinks _his_ Jim, but of course it isn't. "I signed up because my girlfriend was a bitch and I thought it would keep her away from me," McCoy says, but Uhura ignores that. She sways over to him, when she leans down her hair falls like a dream over his face. He threads his fingers through soft strands, and almost misses it when she says, "I don't think it was just the one skinjob."

*

Doing a search turns up six other dead female replicants within the last two years with butchered case-files. All pleasure models, all retired for trying to escape offworld. They didn't even try to hide it very well. He asks Uhura why PikeCorp didn't ask more questions, but she only shrugs. "They just keep track of data. Statistics. They wouldn't have asked any questions, not when they're filed as retired runaways."

"So Nero wants to find the runner that killed his girl. Maybe it was Said, then this stops."

"We're not so lucky. Said was offworld when two of the skinjobs were killed. He's still out there. No way we get to him before Nero does." She calls Robau, demands that he send over the files for the rest of the dead girls, and McCoy figures he won't sleep, but Uhura sits in a chair with her gun in one hand and a book in another and his entire body relaxes, lets go.

He sleeps without dreaming, for once, and when he wakes up she's sitting on the bed, watching him. Her face is curiously soft, and he's never met a runner with so many light and dark spaces before. Usually they're all, on the surface at least, gravel-tight scar tissue - space oddities with healed-over bones and artificial organs. Uhura has a deep red scar that starts from below her collarbone and runs straight down to end right above her crotch. Damage like that, she must have just been too stubborn to die. He trails his finger tentatively down where he remembers it is. She shudders, but doesn't say anything, just holds his face in her hands and kisses him. The insistent ring of the vid-feed stops them both, though. She pulls away and sighs, and there's an expression on her face he can't quite catch. "What," he says.

"Did you want to find out, what happened the last time you were here. The Nexus Five uprising."

"No," he says, but his throat is closed up and it comes out as not more as a whisper.

Her hand on his face is impossibly soft. "I thought you deserved to know."

*

It turns out the first skinjob that was killed was dumped near an abandoned mining shaft. Miles away from where she would have been headed towards had she been running. McCoy looks at the photo of her body, tiny and broken on the ground, and he knows. Uhura just nods her head grimly at him, and arms her weapon. On the way to the site he scrolls through everything. The final stand of the first wave of colonists, faces and bodies tattooed inexplicably as some sort of remembrance of their own dead when their own memories failed them. Gone berserk soon after the Nexus Fives rose, and fortunately there were already runners in place to take them down just like they did the skinjobs.

_Have more children,_ the pamphlets he got constantly advised him, _Baby Bonus! Your very own live-in Nanny!_ The fine print read: Replicant helpers only available off-world. The fine print they didn't tell you about: You got a skinjob servant built to spec just for being willing to leave, and you didn't even have to pop out some squalling parasite to do it.

McCoy flirts, briefly, with wondering if they'd have passed him Jim if only he'd agreed to come here in the first place, but then again Jim came set with memories that weren't his, so most likely not. And after this: anywhere but here. He'd rather they fucking died.

His brain is a tattered mess of memories at the edge of reach, shredding slowly with each and every file he reads, every video he watches.

_... Leonard McCoy, blade runner, retires a family of four gone feral._

_The entirety of Meadow Lane has been scheduled for reconditioning. All residents to be considered hostile. I repeat, all residents..._

_...they're all crazy. Help me...oh god please. Please..._

His own face, wide-eyed and bloody. Screaming at the doctors and nurses until they put him under. Sulu, with his hands pressed at his eyes as blood pours through them. A man whose face he doesn't recognize, calmly chewing on a piece of bone with teeth all filed down to sharp, deadly points.

"Stop," he tells Uhura, and she makes it barely in time and he's keeled over on the ground, throwing up food and then bile and then nothing but air, until he can't breathe, until there's a hand on the nape of his neck, cool and calming, and a voice murmuring in his year.

"You okay for this," she says later, when he's slumped back into the car. "I can call in the locals, send you back to the hotel -"

"No," McCoy says firmly, and swallows away the taste of grime in his throat. "We finish this now."

*

_(in four minutes you will be gone and i must tell you why. when  
a star crashes, the angels are electrified. your life changes  
in ways you can't imagine. When your dreams are perfect, they  
run like machines and leave you dizzy. when you first discover  
you're dying, everyone seems to be saying goodbye. when your  
dreams are perfect, they run like machines. )_

*

They're not expected, so it's easy enough for Uhura to sneak up to the lookout while he's looking elsewhere and stab him, under the ribs and up through the lungs. She lets him fall as he chokes on his own blood, but when she holds up the knife her hand is shaking. "What are we doing?" She says suddenly, brokenly.

"Our jobs," McCoy tells her grimly. He pulls her to him then, hugs her even though they shouldn't. Even though it's hardly the time. "We do this, we can get the fuck off this planet." She nods against him, her body surprisingly frail. "All I want," he mutters, mostly to himself. "Off this fucking planet." One down, three to go, and they get the next one around the corner of the burnt out walls of the church, before Uhura points at a darkened entrance with stone steps leading downwards.

McCoy nods his head, and it's fortunate that they're both looking in the same direction when the skinjob comes barrelling out of the door, his gun blasting blue fire. McCoy ducks, but not in time before a bullet whizzes past his ear, and he doesn't feel it, only the warm shock of blood streaming down his neck and past his collar. Uhura is down on one knee, one hand pressed to the wound in her shoulder. She rolls suddenly, avoids a flurry of bullets, and comes up just in time to drop the skinjob, right between the eyes. He falls with a dull thud, kicks up enough red dust that McCoy can't see for a brief second, but when the air clears he drags Uhura up by her uninjured arm and pulls them both down into the relative safety of the tunnel. His eyes are still adjusting when the cold barrel of a gun jams itself against the back of his neck. "Quietly," Ayel says. "Quietly."

They should be dead, but of course Nero wants them alive, so Uhura hands over her own gun silently and they both stumble deeper in. There are dim lights at regular intervals on the walls, so they're not completely blind - McCoy dimly recalls this used to be a mine. Down an elevator shaft, and then Nero, smiling brightly at them both. Utterly calm and utterly insane. "Used to be I had to come to the blade runners. Now the blade runners come to me. Welcome."

"They killed everyone else," Ayel says, and in the brief second that it takes for Nero to process this McCoy steps back, calmly, and stabs him in the gut with the knife he'd taken from Uhura earlier. Ayel exhales quietly, and he doesn't seem to notice when Uhura grabs hold of his gun with his hand still around it and swings it up to shoot at Nero. Nero's already racing forward, and she misses. The butt of his gun is massive and swings upwards, her head snapping back with an awful crunch, and she crumbles, silently, just like that. All this, in less than five seconds, and McCoy's hand is still on the knife and he tries pulling it out but not in time, Nero grabs his wrist and twists easily, and McCoy screams as he hears his bones break. "On your knees, boy," Nero whispers, and McCoy falls.

He'd never been afraid of dying, not really. It took him years to realize that it was because he'd always felt he'd had nothing to lose. Even with a wife and a child that he adored above all else, it was okay because they'd go on without him. A McCoy-shaped hole in the world would be one not much different from one without, and it was easy to be fearless that way. McCoy breathes in deep, jagged breaths of pain, blinks through tears at Nero's face, pale and tattooed like death, and when Nero asks, "Are you afraid," he can do nothing but nod his head. "She was afraid too. I can still hear her screams, when I close my eyes."

"We had nothing to do with her death." But he knows, Nero's not listening.

"It's okay." Nero sounds kind, almost. Sympathetic. The last time he was on his knees, he was offered mercy, inexplicably. He won't be offered it here, and he's no more deserving now then he was back on that roof.

"It only hurts for a while, and then it's over." McCoy almost believes him, and he closes his eyes, but the soft snick of the gun going off isn't followed by pain, or oblivion, and the body that hits the ground is definitely not his.

"This makes it three." Only Uhura can sound chipper at a time like this. "You owe me a drink."

 

> "So he loved her, and he wanted revenge. Why did everyone else follow him though."
> 
> "Maybe he promised them escape. Maybe they just didn't want anyone else to die."
> 
> "Empathy, from them. You'd almost think they were human."
> 
> "No. We're not that kind."

 

_chapter 7._

They don't speak, on the way up the elevator to Kirk's. McCoy rests his cheek against the glass wall and tries to keep his eyes open, casually watches the ramrod straight set of Uhura's shoulders as she deliberately doesn't meet his eyes. Spock is standing there to greet them when the doors open, of course it'd be fucking Spock. McCoy doesn't even have it in him to feel a twinge of satisfaction at the subtle, devastated expression that crosses his face when he sees Uhura. "Are you okay," he asks her softly.

"I'm fine, so good of you to be concerned," McCoy says, but it's wasted because Spock clearly has stopped being aware that he's even there. Then he spots Jim, leaning against the door at the far end of the room, and he stops caring about fucking Spock, or Uhura, or anyone else in the entire fucking universe.

They hug, in the end, like old friends, or long lost brothers. Jim's body is warm, and strong, and that surprises him; somehow he'd expected him to be fragile and breakable, his memories once again twisting reality beyond recognition. "You look like shit, old man," Jim says, after they finally pull apart, after a lifetime of nothing but Jim's breath on his throat and Jim's arms, tight around his waist.

McCoy laughs. "Not as old as I feel, kid. Wish I could say the same about you."

Jim's smile fades, so fast it's as if it was never there. "Yeah, about that."

*

You can't fix what's already broken. Or that's what Jim says, the one that's lying in a hospital bed surrounded by PikeCorp-employed doctors and nurses and one-way mirrors. The one that's dying, extremities losing motor function and the rest of him promising to follow soon enough. The one that's his, and his Jim, he says, "I told him, or me, you know, we both know you well enough. Just keep quiet about this. Let me go quietly, and live. But he's a sentimental fuck, and he didn't want me to die alone. Which of course means I don't want me to die alone, which makes me selfish, and it makes your head hurt after a while, doesn't it?"

McCoy says, "This is not what they promised us," and he's suddenly, inexplicably, angry. Rage enough to tear the whole world down, with perfect clarity of thought, but then Jim's hand is on his face, and it's gone, just as fast. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. You're supposed to live."

"None of us do, Bones. I get better than most. I'm not afraid."

It's a lie, and they both know it, but for whose benefit, McCoy's not sure.

He stays, until the end, and when he staggers out finally, Jim, not-Jim, is waiting. "Bones," he says, and McCoy ignores him, keeps on walking. "Bones."

"Don't call me that. Don't ever call me that."

 

> "So I hear congratulations are in order, Kirk."
> 
> "Congratulations?"
> 
> "Nexus Seven. Better than the real thing, right?"
> 
> "Enjoy him, McCoy. I'm assured he lives."
> 
> "Fuck you. Fuck all of you to hell."

 

_chapter 8._

Three weeks, five days and twenty three hours. That's how long it takes for Jim to show up at his doorstep. In a spinner that's only slightly less pimped out than Uhura's, shiny sleek silver that he pats fondly and tells McCoy, by way of greeting, "Isn't she a beaut. I call her Denise."

"Let me guess. Gift from Kirk?"

"Yes, but don't give me that look. Technically she's yours, since I don't get to own property." His smile is bright, and beguiling, as usual, although it doesn't quite reach his eyes. He brushes blithely past McCoy through the open door, and peers around the cabin as if he owns the place. "I like what you've done to this. Very homey. I hope you have the guest-room built up, although eh. I brought a sleeping bag just in case. You were never one for hospitality. For example, I could use a drink."

"Kitchen, first cabinet on the left," McCoy says automatically, and something inside him, something that had been held together intricately with denial and loss and hopelessness, breaks. "I don't want you here."

"Sure you do." Jim returns from the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers. McCoy takes the glass offered to him and Jim fills it almost to the brim. "Oh, just so you know, the Nexus Sevens come off the line next week. They're talking about re-introducing them back to Earth, because the possibility of rebellion is slim, what with them not knowing they're replicants and all. High risk occupations, mostly. Good thing you're retired, you might be out of a job someday otherwise."

The alcohol burns down his throat, and he uses that as an excuse as to why he doesn't respond, or why, when Jim settles himself down on the couch and props his feet up on the coffee table, he does nothing but take up the remaining space next to him.

  


_end._

**Author's Note:**

> **Quotes:**  
> \- [An Elegy for My Mother In Which She Scarcely Appears](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-elegy-for-my-mother-in-which-she-scarcely-appears/), Eavan Boland  
> \- _The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe_, Douglas Adams  
> \- _Still Life with Woodpecker_, Tom Robbins  
> \- _Equal Rites_, Terry Pratchett  
> \- [The Astronomer and the Poet](http://poetry.dreamwidth.org/15913.html), Jessica Piazza  
> \- [You Are Never Ready](http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoets/901745.html), Nicole Blackman


End file.
